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The Website Specification

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Re: The Website Specification

#151
post #141
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 2000s wasn't everything just misused/abused table layouts? Maybe we frequented different places, but that's how I remember it.

That's funny because the argument against tables was always that they added extra markup a.k.a lines of code, only to replace them with dozens of nested divs, half assed CSS layout ideologies (floats and clear's, for example) and barely functional JS that all somehow needed to work in sync which was almost never. That's how NPM was born. Tables worked with 100% of the browsers. The alternatives needed polyfills and s…

There will always be a tension between those who want purely semantic documents and those who argue for a pragmatic allowance of layout to just be allowed in the document itself.

It’s indisputable though that the modern BS of frontend tech is approaching an asymptote of ridiculous complexity. The divs go so deep that it is often pointless to even try to determine what’s going on from a web inspector. And I think the documents themselves are now less semantic than they ever were. Sure, tables were abused (to the extent they weren’t anything close to tabular data). But today every element you see being a layer of 37 divs and spans that don’t even function or in some cases even render without JavaScript getting involved… the web is now just basically a responsive version of PDF.

Re: The Website Specification

#152
post #46
post #11

"Agent Readiness" will likely age as well as "Web 4.0 Blockchain Integration" has. (To be entirely clear, not because agents won't be a relevant thing, although certainly I have my doubts, but because I believe even if they are a relevant thing, requiring special allowances from sites undermines the whole point, and such things will only end up used by bad actors to mismatch what agents see to what humans see, and so…

I swear to God. I just want to go back to the 2000s where everything was just plain HTML and some basic CSS, if at all any, by default you got responsive design out of the box, readable text and super user friendly GUI from the browser's own default stylesheet. Today you open any website. Everything is a fucking component. A simple dropdown with a finite list? Has its own loader and makes 10 fetch requests for no rea…

> just plain HTML and some basic CSS, if at all any

I built my own website like this and I love it. Highly recommended.

Re: The Website Specification

#153
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem relevant to responsive design? HTML and CSS are definitely responsive out of the box, but OTOH I remember how many designers of that era thought responsiveness was a bug and asked devs to add width:920px to body...

CSS, especially the box model, was not consistent across browsers.

True. Does not prevent the design from being responsive. Even with no CSS at all a design is responsive unless you specifically choose to break that

Re: The Website Specification

#155
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSS, especially the box model, was not consistent across browsers.

True. Does not prevent the design from being responsive. Even with no CSS at all a design is responsive unless you specifically choose to break that

Right but how would you even display a vertical menu back then? `float: left` was rather bad, so you went back to using tables[0]. Good luck making these responsive.

[0]: and to using dozens of images sliced to fit your table cells, for that cool hover effect as well as round corners. :-)

Re: The Website Specification

#157
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't have a form with just a login email and force the user to click to enter the password I was noticing that this kind of login forms seems to be proliferating, especially on "big tech" sites. (And personally, I also find it annoying) Always assumed there was some reason why sites are switching to this pattern, e.g. better bot protection. Does anyone know more about this?

I suspect they ask for email first in order to determine whether to log you in via SSO vs. require a password.

I think it started with somebody like Yahoo!, who said that they that way could show your profile image or something and thus verify to you that this isn't a scam phishing site. I don't remember the complete argument, though.

But yeah, nowadays it's mostly SSO, I assume. Which is still annoying as on the SSO site I have to enter my mail address again (or rather: have my password manager doing it ;) ), which is an inconvenience and where I wonder how much of that is to collect data about companies where employees would like to use the service for having sales reaching out. In many places (like Slack or Zoom) company is picked by domain name (yourcompany.slack.com etc.) and then leading to the right SSO.

Re: The Website Specification

#158
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried this just now on a landing page for an app that I wrote over a decade ago and it told me it was pure AI slop lol

I tried it on my personal website, which I wrote without any AI whatsoever, and it decided it's "pure AI slop" based on "tricolon abuse" alone. I would be less mad if the examples it flagged were actually tricolons, but only a couple of them were! Most were lists with more than three things in them. The slop detector, alas, is slop.

I tried it on my personal web site, which I don't think I've made any changes to in over 20 years except possibly removing some out of date links and it says it is pure AI slop.

The proof it cited was "Short Punch Fragments". These are:

• In a section where I say who I am I start with "Who am I? I'm Spider-Man!" and then on the next line say "OK, maybe not". Then there is a table showing my identities in various places.

"I'm Spider-Man!" and "OK, maybe not" are the evidence there that it is AI written.

• I've got a quiz on the page. It says someone is caught with all of the following items and asks what they were planning.

   1. A large needle and thread
   2. roll of paper
   3. Three small pebbles
   4. A small bag of fine-grained dust
   5. A small empty waterskin
   6. A pair of scissors
   7. A canteen full of cream
   8. A fur cap
   9. A purse full of counterfeit coins
  10. A raw egg
It cites lines 1, 3, and 8 of that as evidence of AI.

Re: The Website Specification

#159
post #46
post #11

"Agent Readiness" will likely age as well as "Web 4.0 Blockchain Integration" has. (To be entirely clear, not because agents won't be a relevant thing, although certainly I have my doubts, but because I believe even if they are a relevant thing, requiring special allowances from sites undermines the whole point, and such things will only end up used by bad actors to mismatch what agents see to what humans see, and so…

I swear to God. I just want to go back to the 2000s where everything was just plain HTML and some basic CSS, if at all any, by default you got responsive design out of the box, readable text and super user friendly GUI from the browser's own default stylesheet. Today you open any website. Everything is a fucking component. A simple dropdown with a finite list? Has its own loader and makes 10 fetch requests for no rea…

The problem is smartphones.

You literally can't make a website from the 2000's nowadays, because that means you want a 800px fixed width layout or something of sort.

If you do that, your website will look absolutely gorgeous since the 800px width + precise pointer + hover requirement allows you to get rid of all unnecessary whitespace, explain the UI with tooltips, and guarantees you always have enough width for one sidebar, but it won't be responsive.

The real solution to the modern web is to destroy all mobile devices on the planet.

Re: The Website Specification

#160
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I swear to God. I just want to go back to the 2000s where everything was just plain HTML and some basic CSS, if at all any, by default you got responsive design out of the box, readable text and super user friendly GUI from the browser's own default stylesheet. Today you open any website. Everything is a fucking component. A simple dropdown with a finite list? Has its own loader and makes 10 fetch requests for no rea…

Me too!

Is this tailwind?
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